Potential Goals of an Academic Program

The ability to read: …to cultivate the art of thoughtful, patient, critical reading.

The ability to speak: …students should be able to discuss complex topics in clear, organized, and accessible language…

The ability to listen: … to understand where different people are coming from, to find a grain of truth in different or even clashing perspectives, and formulate opinion…

The ability to write: …students should be able to articulate their thoughts in writing in a clear and simple way… to …lay out an argument in a coherent sequence of steps[,] … not simply as an academic exercise but as a means [to] comprehend and discover, what is true and what really matters.

Leadership skills: …to foster the qualities essential to leadership: to be organized; to … see things that need to be done and to initiate projects to do them…

Appreciation: … of different modes of inquiry and different kinds of knowledge (humanities, social and natural sciences); of different modes of creative endeavor (writing, painting, sculpting, music, cooking); of different modes of vocational and recreational endeavor (horsemanship, mechanics, sailing).

How would Williams fare, if the above were the criteria upon which its Accreditation Committee judged it?

My section, the Report to the Faculty, Administration, Trustees, & the Students of Williams by an Evaluation Team representing the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Prepared after study of the institution’s self-evaluation report and a visit to the campus October 28-31, 2007 for decennial reaffirmation of accreditation…. I think you get the idea!

I am going to give you the “in compliance with NEASC’s Standards of Accreditation” as seen through the eyes of a townie who reads Ephblog, townie synopsis version.

Come one, come all, to the Fifth Annual CGCL. For the uninitiated, that’s a “Cross-Generational Community of Learning”. Though perhaps not quite as brilliant as Frank Costanza’s “Festivus for the rest-of-us,” Dave Kane came up with a pretty good and worthwhile idea — Winter Study (or at least a slice of it) for the rest of us, who can no longer go wander around campus and wonder at the winter whispers of Williamstown’s accumulating snow. Maybe of greater interest is that CGCL is assuredly one of EphBlog’s most successful — and no less importantly, least controversial — initiatives.

After one year off, due to the rather political nature of CGCL IV (demands of federal judicial employment and all), I’m very pleased to be back and participating for the fourth time this year, to discuss Williams and the Accreditation Process. My topic is the overview and introduction, more specifically, Williams’s own Self-Study process, the first step in Accreditation. Self-Study, in turn, comprises an Introduction, Preface, and Overview, which I will talk about in turn, after the cut.